Coronavirus thread

Started by JBS, March 12, 2020, 07:03:50 PM

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Rinaldo

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on March 16, 2020, 05:20:14 AMHow are others coping here?  Are you 1) eating out less (if you did eat out often to begin with); 2) shopping less often?; 3) ordering, if possible, to have groceries and/or meals delivered?; 4) stocking up on anything in particular?; 5) cooking more of your meals from scratch?; 6) changing the time of day or days that you do shop?;  7) ordering more online?;   8 helping to shop for neighbors?  Just curious....stay safe everyone!

Restaurants are not an option anymore, so we're cooking (and having lots of fun coming up with recipes for meals we haven't had for ages). We've limited our shopping and try to plan ahead more, although we're not stocking up on anything. We've stitched together our own masks as most of the country is doing right now, including people making bunches of them for their local hospitals/retirement homes – the community really coming together is what gives me hope. I see neighbors helping each other and basically people acting in a sensible and unselfish way, now that they realized the true magnitude of this thing.

I can work my primary job from home, which makes things super easy for me, but I've got a lot of friends in the music/sound/theatre business who are suddenly without a paycheck, so we're trying to help them any way we can right now.

Quote from: vandermolen on March 16, 2020, 10:12:53 AM
The schools in the UK are staying open for now. I dislike Boris Johnson but think it is the right decision.

I respectfully disagree. This is gambling with people's lives.

vandermolen

Quote from: Rinaldo on March 16, 2020, 10:20:50 AM
Restaurants are not an option anymore, so we're cooking (and having lots of fun coming up with recipes for meals we haven't had for ages). We've limited our shopping and try to plan ahead more, although we're not stocking up on anything. We've stitched together our own masks as most of the country is doing right now, including people making bunches of them for their local hospitals/retirement homes – the community really coming together is what gives me hope. I see neighbors helping each other and basically people acting in a sensible and unselfish way, now that they realized the true magnitude of this thing.

I can work my primary job from home, which makes things super easy for me, but I've got a lot of friends in the music/sound/theatre business who are suddenly without a paycheck, so we're trying to help them any way we can right now.

I respectfully disagree. This is gambling with people's lives.

Re: your last point. I respect your view but am not so sure. If they close the schools the pupils will be at home and their parents may well be at work and therefore they may have to be looked after by their grandparents, who are probably more at risk than any other age group. Therefore the children risk passing on the virus to their grandparents. Whilst they are at school this is less likely to happen.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Florestan

Quote from: vandermolen on March 16, 2020, 10:56:01 AM
Re: your last point. I respect your view but am not so sure. If they close the schools the pupils will be at home and their parents may well be at work and therefore they may have to be looked after by their grandparents, who are probably more at risk than any other age group. Therefore the children risk passing on the virus to their grandparents. Whilst they are at school this is less likely to happen.

I'm sorry, Jeffrey, but I have to disagree. If both children are grandparents stay home, the risk of infection is minimal. If both kids and teachers and parents and grandparents intersect in schools (not to mention the public transportation which probably many if not most of them use to get there) the risk is much higher.

What Boris Johnson does with his "herd immunity" approach is simply medical darwinism: the young and the healty will certainly survive, the middle-aged and healthy will most likely survive, the old and healthy will possibly survive, the old and sick will surely die, but hey, it's the price we got to pay for getting immunity --- and all the while the economy keeps going on. This is cynicism run amok.

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

vandermolen

Quote from: Florestan on March 16, 2020, 12:28:53 PM
I'm sorry, Jeffrey, but I have to disagree. If both children are grandparents stay home, the risk of infection is minimal. If both kids and teachers and parents and grandparents intersect in schools (not to mention the public transportation which probably many if not most of them use to get there) the risk is much higher.

What Boris Johnson does with his "herd immunity" approach is simply medical darwinism: the young and the healty will certainly survive, the middle-aged and healthy will most likely survive, the old and healthy will possibly survive, the old and sick will surely die, but hey, it's the price we got to pay for getting immunity --- and all the while the economy keeps going on. This is cynicism run amok.
Fair enough Andrei but the Chief Medical Officer said today that if one person in the house is infected then there is a very good chance that they will pass it on to others in the house.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Florestan

Quote from: vandermolen on March 16, 2020, 12:33:40 PM
the Chief Medical Officer said today that if one person in the house is infected then there is a very good chance that they will pass it on to others in the house.

That's absolutely true, happened in Romania, where a person infected all his family. But I ask you: when is the probabilty of infection higher, when all persons in a household interact with many other persons, or when only a few persons in the household do?

Btw, the number of infections in Romania would have been much smaller if some people returning from high risk countries would have told the truth to the authorities and got placed in quarantine, or would have not left the quarantine. Of the 168 cases reported as I'm typing, 42 are officially prosecuted for either lying about the countries they were returning from, or for leaving the quarantine. Go figure!
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: Archaic Torso of Apollo on March 16, 2020, 09:43:06 AM
I'm a translator, so I'm working with documents on my computer, and all of this depends on having a smooth flow of international business. Demand naturally fluctuates, that's the nature of this freelance job, but I have no idea how long the current slowdown will last. Teleconferencing is irrelevant to me personally.

The brewpub is planning to close this week until it becomes safe to reopen. It is a nice place, in fact they just celebrated their 10th anniversary. They've won a lot of awards over that decade.

https://www.lbbrew.com/
Looks like a cool place!  And I see that they really DO spin vinyl!   ;D Have you ever brought any of your own albums to listen to there?

Hope that things pick up for you soon to regarding translating.

Best wishes,

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: vandermolen on March 16, 2020, 10:12:53 AM
The schools in the UK are staying open for now. I dislike Boris Johnson but think it is the right decision. If the school, where I teach, closes I will be expected to teach my classes by 'online video lessons' from home. Sounds like a total nightmare. Apparently my students will be able to see me but I will not be able to see them. I have a vision of trying to teach them from the living room of my house with the cat standing on the laptop keyboard and staring into the screen, as he often does, and my wife shouting from the kitchen for me to come and help with the washing up. I told my daughter about this nightmare scenario and her boss said that she wants to join my 'online lesson'.  ???
:laugh: Oh, dear!  But that is a funny image....sorry!   :)  Think that I'd worry more that my students would be so focused on my 'cute/amusing' cat that they wouldn't be listening to what I was saying!
*
Suggestions:  1) Kitty is to be (temporarily) barred from being in "X" room whilst you are teaching (make sure that food and water and favorite toys are elsewhere); 2) No communication allowed from family members whilst you are teaching (perhaps a note on the door to remind them)...short of an emergency, of course. 3) wondering whether or not you would need to have on hand some kind of dry-erase board?  Or do you use something like that in class at all?; 4) have a bottle of water nearby in event of a dry throat (is there a pause switch or could you go off-camera?) 5) turn off any landline phones in that room or temporarily unplug them; 6) have a good look in the mirror before having class; 7) clean your video/photo lens on the computer before class so no 'smudges'.   :)

*hopefull Kitty will not meow and/or scratch the door wanting to get into your room!

Schools closed here and a number of other organizations....some stores too either closing for either a couple of weeks, a few days, indefinitely?  I've received emails from a few businesses that I've signed up to and some of them are doing "curbside" sales:  some form of either order online or over the phone and they will meet you somewhere....could be entrance to the store...just outside...??
Pohjolas Daughter

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: Rinaldo on March 16, 2020, 10:20:50 AM
Restaurants are not an option anymore, so we're cooking (and having lots of fun coming up with recipes for meals we haven't had for ages). We've limited our shopping and try to plan ahead more, although we're not stocking up on anything. We've stitched together our own masks as most of the country is doing right now, including people making bunches of them for their local hospitals/retirement homes – the community really coming together is what gives me hope. I see neighbors helping each other and basically people acting in a sensible and unselfish way, now that they realized the true magnitude of this thing.

I can work my primary job from home, which makes things super easy for me, but I've got a lot of friends in the music/sound/theatre business who are suddenly without a paycheck, so we're trying to help them any way we can right now.

I respectfully disagree. This is gambling with people's lives.
Good to hear that you're having fun cooking!   :)  Wow, stitching your own masks?!  How do you know what to make them of and how effective they might be?  Obviously, something is better than nothing....
Pohjolas Daughter

greg

First day of work from home.

This is just too good... so good that the next job I do I might only accept WFH positions... if possible...
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

Ratliff

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on March 16, 2020, 02:17:43 PM
Good to hear that you're having fun cooking!   :)  Wow, stitching your own masks?!  How do you know what to make them of and how effective they might be?  Obviously, something is better than nothing....

Any mask will remind you not to touch your mouth or nose, and touching your mouth or nose after touching a contaminated surface is the most common mode of transmission. You can consciously avoid people who might sneeze in your direction, but it's almost impossible to remember not to touch your face.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on March 16, 2020, 01:56:32 PM
Looks like a cool place!  And I see that they really DO spin vinyl!   ;D Have you ever brought any of your own albums to listen to there?

Not yet, but I hope to when they reopen. Tuesday night is Vinyl Night, you can bring your own records and they will play them.

This came about because the previous manager was an indie rock fanatic, and he was spinning vinyl all the time.
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

premont

Quote from: Baron Scarpia on March 16, 2020, 02:51:11 PM
Any mask will remind you not to touch your mouth or nose, and touching your mouth or nose after touching a contaminated surface is the most common mode of transmission. You can consciously avoid people who might sneeze in your direction, but it's almost impossible to remember not to touch your face.

So true. The chief of the health authorities in our country on TV told the viewers several times to avoid touching the face, but he himself did it all the time - being nervous I think, but the result is equally bad.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

JBS

Quote from: Florestan on March 16, 2020, 12:28:53 PM
I'm sorry, Jeffrey, but I have to disagree. If both children are grandparents stay home, the risk of infection is minimal. If both kids and teachers and parents and grandparents intersect in schools (not to mention the public transportation which probably many if not most of them use to get there) the risk is much higher.

What Boris Johnson does with his "herd immunity" approach is simply medical darwinism: the young and the healty will certainly survive, the middle-aged and healthy will most likely survive, the old and healthy will possibly survive, the old and sick will surely die, but hey, it's the price we got to pay for getting immunity --- and all the while the economy keeps going on. This is cynicism run amok.

Not quite.  The idea is to keep infection rates slower and old/sick as isolated as possible, until herd immunity develops. Meanwhile, if infection rate is manageable, hospitals will be able to provide ventilators and all other necessary care to the old/sick who do become infected.

In the US (not sure about elsewhere) the question of closing schools is complicated by the fact that schools serve not only as effective day care but also provide one or more meals per schoolday to kids from poor families. For these kids school means healthy food, possibly the main meals of the day.  So local authorities have to come up with alternate means of distributing meals and alternate day care for parents with no alternative.

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk

T. D.

FYI:
My brother is a doctor in Rochester, NY. This was his response (in personal e-mail) today to the standard "how's it going" question:

Crazy. Not a lot of cases yet but uncertainty and anxiety. The sad thing is that this illustrates how messed up our health care system is. The outfit that supplies our hospital with all personal protective gear was, until a few weeks ago, getting all of the materials from factories in Wuhan China. We have not gotten any of the results of the 250+ COVID tests and have just gotten the capacity to run the tests here today and capacity will only be about 100 a day.
The hospital and country are running out of gloves, masks and goggles.
Not a good scene.

Karl Henning

Quote from: T. D. on March 16, 2020, 05:07:54 PM
FYI:
My brother is a doctor in Rochester, NY. This was his response (in personal e-mail) today to the standard "how's it going" question:

Crazy. Not a lot of cases yet but uncertainty and anxiety. The sad thing is that this illustrates how messed up our health care system is. The outfit that supplies our hospital with all personal protective gear was, until a few weeks ago, getting all of the materials from factories in Wuhan China. We have not gotten any of the results of the 250+ COVID tests and have just gotten the capacity to run the tests here today and capacity will only be about 100 a day.
The hospital and country are running out of gloves, masks and goggles.
Not a good scene.


Oof!
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

André


Governments are getting an F for their coronavirus response:

The UK:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/16/britain-coronavirus-disaster/


The USA:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/16/this-crisis-looks-worse-than-911-2008-collapse-will-we-finally-fix-our-politics/


No real thumbs down on Trudeau from Canada's newspapers, except those from my province (Québec), but they are in French, so no link. But here's my assessment: F.

This analysis gives a very interesting perspective:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-first-coronavirus-error-was-complacency/

mc ukrneal

Here is the problem in a nutshell:

Be kind to your fellow posters!!

Mandryka

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

vandermolen

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on March 16, 2020, 02:13:37 PM
:laugh: Oh, dear!  But that is a funny image....sorry!   :)  Think that I'd worry more that my students would be so focused on my 'cute/amusing' cat that they wouldn't be listening to what I was saying!
*
Suggestions:  1) Kitty is to be (temporarily) barred from being in "X" room whilst you are teaching (make sure that food and water and favorite toys are elsewhere); 2) No communication allowed from family members whilst you are teaching (perhaps a note on the door to remind them)...short of an emergency, of course. 3) wondering whether or not you would need to have on hand some kind of dry-erase board?  Or do you use something like that in class at all?; 4) have a bottle of water nearby in event of a dry throat (is there a pause switch or could you go off-camera?) 5) turn off any landline phones in that room or temporarily unplug them; 6) have a good look in the mirror before having class; 7) clean your video/photo lens on the computer before class so no 'smudges'.   :)

*hopefull Kitty will not meow and/or scratch the door wanting to get into your room!

Schools closed here and a number of other organizations....some stores too either closing for either a couple of weeks, a few days, indefinitely?  I've received emails from a few businesses that I've signed up to and some of them are doing "curbside" sales:  some form of either order online or over the phone and they will meet you somewhere....could be entrance to the store...just outside...??
Good advice. Thank you PD  :)
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

vandermolen

Quote from: JBS on March 16, 2020, 05:03:23 PM
Not quite.  The idea is to keep infection rates slower and old/sick as isolated as possible, until herd immunity develops. Meanwhile, if infection rate is manageable, hospitals will be able to provide ventilators and all other necessary care to the old/sick who do become infected.

In the US (not sure about elsewhere) the question of closing schools is complicated by the fact that schools serve not only as effective day care but also provide one or more meals per schoolday to kids from poor families. For these kids school means healthy food, possibly the main meals of the day.  So local authorities have to come up with alternate means of distributing meals and alternate day care for parents with no alternative.

That's a good point Jeffrey. I expect that the schools here may well close by the end of the week any way.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).